The Bronies Take Manhattan

The only hint of their
presence in Midtown’s Hotel Pennsylvania—the lobby still garlanded
for the holiday season and crowded with milling tourists—was a
20-something guy shuffling around in medium-rinse jeans and a
lackluster black leather jacket. He might have been one of the
tourists himself were it not for the fluorescent pastel sign he
held reading: THIS WAY TO BRONYCON! Pictured on the sign was a pink
and purple pony in a green field.

The so-called Bronies—a herd of mostly male, mostly white,
mostly mid-20s fans of the animated TV show “My Little Pony:
Friendship Is Magic”—have had
plenty of press
coverage of late, but this in-your-face mass gathering was not
so typical. Although BroNYCon is held several times a year,
Saturday’s was the biggest one to date.

Jammed in a holding area by the elevators were several hundred
Bronies and Pegasisters—that’s the name used for the female
Bronies, who were out in roughly 1 to 6 ratio to the guys. The
explosion of wild color on display here—the glitter, the rainbows,
the homemade pony-mane hooded sweatshirts, all of it bright and
sparkly enough to send any pop culture-aware preteen princess into
spasms of jealousy —stood out after the neutrality of the lobby.
The elevators whisked attendees up to the 5th-floor ballroom ten at
a time. The remaining crowd chanted, “P-O-N-I-E-S! What does that
spell? Ponies!” Not the most mellifluous cheer, but it was
enthusiastic.

The $40-per-person slots for the conference were sold out, and
later in the day hundreds of optimistic Bronies would be lining the
stairs, a hallway and part of the city block outside in hopes of
scoring a door ticket. One woman, in glasses and a headband with
white plush pony ears and a sparkly rainbow unicorn horn, had been
watching for hours as her pre-registered peers trotted by. She
waited, wringing her hands.

For those lucky enough to reach upstairs, avoiding wings and
horns was a hazard of navigating the crowd. But the vendors, the
registration packets, the elbow-to-the-ribs crowdedness and
warmth—all of this was familiar to anyone who’s ever attended a
conference before, just here it all had a pony twist. The vendors,
Bronies themselves, were selling all kinds of pony-related gear:
hats with attached manes, figurines, by-commission pony art and
custom Brony shirts (“Fighting the cute crusade!” one of the shirts
proclaimed). One vendor asked a fellow Brony how he managed to
secure his wings to his hoodie (answer: elastic); afterward, he
threw in a sticker with the guy’s purchase. “See, friendship
is magic,” he said. One table housed “Kate’s Pony Art,”
stacks of doodles of My Little Ponies, the edges of the paper still
ragged from being torn from a notebook. A can drive was going on
behind a “charity is magic” sign. The registration packet promised
a performance from NeighSlayer, “Ponyville’s Hottest Metal
Band!”

There was even an instance of that conference stand-by: the
quasi-academic panel. Early in the day, a middle-aged guy in a
white lab coat took the stage and introduced himself as “Dr. Psych
Ology” (né Dr. Patrick Edwards, Ph.D). The doctor explained that he
has surveyed more than 2,300
Bronies since his son—a young man sitting a few rows from the
back with a fleece My Little Pony mane hat jammed on his head and
that “Daaaaad!” look of mortification on his face—became
one.

“My son said he often asks himself, ‘WWPD? What would a pony
do?’ when deciding how to react to a person or a situation,”
Edwards said. He decided to study the phenomenon to have data to
fight the inevitable sneering blowback directed toward his son. He
broke down the study’s findings of Brony demographics and
behaviors—86 percent male, average age of 21, 63 percent college
educated or above, with varying degrees of participation in the
spectrum of out-and-proud Bronyism—then summed up. “It’s about love
and tolerance,” he said, blinking out at the lights. You could tell
he was pleased to have explained, to himself and to the crowd, just
what in the actual hell his son has been getting up to.

Pushing through the at-capacity space—taking an occasional wing
or mane to the face—that claim of love and tolerance rang true.
People with their DeviantART usernames and gaming handles
(DeviantART’s PurpleTinker helped organize the event) written on
their nametags hugged it out whenever they met an Internet friend
in person for the first time. Other nametags had cute monikers like
“Milkshake” and “Cupcake.” Conversation seemed to come easily among
the pony-loving strangers, many of whom drove hours to attend.

Terence McCarron, 28, made the trip from Schenectady with his
wife. She was off visiting with city friends while he wandered
BroNYCon in his homemade, hand-painted wings and rainbow tail,
pointed robin’s-egg-blue pony ears strapped on over a black newsboy
cap and rainbow-gradient hair. He got interested in “My Little
Pony” the previous summer when a friend introduced him to the show.
He didn’t know anyone at the conference. His wife, he said, “can’t
believe” that he’s a Brony, but “doesn’t oppose.” For McCarron,
being a Brony is no different than being a hard-core Harry Potter
nerd or a fantasy baseball fanatic. He likes the “non-combatative
fandom” he found, he likes the art and he likes the friendly
message of the show.

“At the very least, I don’t feel like I’m getting dumber when I
watch it.”

Steve Decker, a Maryland Brony who was selling from his stock of
hundreds of My Little Pony toys, each of them carefully enclosed in
a Ziploc baggie, said that “My Little Pony” saved his life when he
discovered it in 2004. His work as a student loan collections
officer was making him suicidal. “My job was literally to ruin
peoples’ lives,” he said. “Every day, I’d hope to get into an
accident and die on my way to work.” Looking for some small, simple
happiness, he went to Toys “R” Us. The boy toys were all focused on
killing and violence, while many of the girls’ dolls were slutty or
stupid, he said. The 2-for-1 sale on My Little Ponies clinched it
for him.

“Everyone here is out to love and tolerate each other,” he
said.

He met fellow Bronies online and now goes to monthly DC-area
meet-ups, where he’s made close friends in the small group. He also
has a new job as a courier, for which he’s free to wear pony shirts
and pins. The happiness he found with ponies has turned his life
around.

“I mean, all they do is have parties, make friends and eat cake!
I can get behind that.”

Kase Wickman lives and
brunches in New York. She still isn’t sure what to do with the My
Little Pony Applejack figurine her mom recently sent her. You can
follow her on Twitter.